


Blood on the Ivories

by Daftinthehead (intravenusann)



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Blood, M/M, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-05-07
Updated: 2012-05-07
Packaged: 2017-11-04 23:54:50
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,011
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/399619
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intravenusann/pseuds/Daftinthehead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What’s a little bloodshed — or knifeplay or sex — between friends?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood on the Ivories

It had started at the piano and it was fitting, he thought, that it should end there. There was a certain balance in it. He appreciated balance, but he didn’t appreciate it working against him.

The first time, he’d stood with his sleeves up and gloves on. Leather wasn’t suited for the task of cleaning up the gore of a losing fight, but it suited him. They couldn’t always win, yes, but there was no need for that fact to move beyond those involved in these little skirmishes.

The blood splattered across the white and black teeth of the piano was already sticky. Slick’s blood, Droog thought, dragging two fingers through it. The taste of copper was dimmed with time, but it’s still there. This was… Abnormal, a deviation, but an idle pleasure. He drew his tongue over his fingers until there was only the taste of leather.

Patterns were drawn out as he cleaned the keys — first just with his fingers and then, hedonistically, with his tongue. There was no one to know. Everything was quiet, except for his breathing.

“Just this once,” he’d said, wiping his mouth and moving on to other tasks.

But other opportunities had arisen and he had indulged in them.

He could have easily orchestrated it so that more opportunities came, but a man like Diamonds Droog created his own ethical lines and, once set, he did not cross them. That was a line. He wouldn’t endanger Slick anymore than Slick endangered himself just to indulge a sick fetish.

Defending the indefensible was one of his well-honed talents; defending his behavior to himself, then, was comparatively easy. Even as he incautiously shortened the timeline between fight and clean-up, Droog never believed that his actions would be uncovered. Blood, after it had already been spilled across the floor, held no interest for his friends and it was very apparent at times how they felt about cleanliness.

In retrospect, however, it had been a poor choice on his part to assume anything at all about Spades Slick. But he was too lost in the taste of blood to even notice the distinct, hard fall of his heels across the club floor.

“The hell are you doing, Droog?’ Slick asked.

He had his fingers in his mouth, teeth digging into the bare skin of his knuckles. The taste of blood was still warm against his tongue and he intended to scour away every drop of it. The other hand was lost in his own hair, his hat was set aside on the closed top of the piano to keep it out of the way. His gloves rested beside it.

“I asked,” he said. “The fuck are you doing, Droog?”

The words he’d used to talk himself into this wouldn’t dare leave his lips when he was actually faced with Spades Slick’s scowling, still bloodied face.

“Slick,” he began to answer, his voice as smooth as scotch over a glass of frosted nails.

“Shut up,” Slick told him. “I know what you’re doing.”

“Then why did you ask?”

Droog turned, stood. His hair, he knew, was wrecked, but he was still far more put together than Slick was. But Slick still smirked up at him, teeth showing, like he was the better man.

“It was rhetorical, ya bastard” Slick answered. “You know that’s my blood, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“You like how my blood tastes?” he pressed on. “That looks pretty fucking bad, Droog. Don’t think I can trust a man who gets off on the thought of me bleedin’ to death.”

“You can trust me, Slick,” Droog told him, and he meant it in a way that ran deep and cold and serious in the timbre of his voice.

“Can I?” he asked. Even in the shadows, the seven of spades shined.

“It’s a… quirk,” Droog explained, brushing back a few out of place hairs. “We all have those, don’t we, Slick? It will end here.”

“Roll up your sleeve,” Slick told him.

“Why?”

“Do you wanna do what I say or do you wanna fucking fight?”

The blade moved between Slick’s hands, from flesh to metal, with a most unique sound, faster than Droog could see. A knife fight with Spades Slick would be incredibly stupid and potentially suicidal; Droog cared to avoid it at any cost. He stripped off his jacket, folding it lengthwise and then over one arm; unpinned his cufflink and set it aside without a sound; carefully rolled up his sleeve. It was methodical and Slick waited through it all, impatiently trading the blade from one hand to the other, giving it the occasional spin.

Metal closed around Droog’s wrist, as he’d expected, and yanked his arm up between them. Slick’s grip was strong — strong enough to force Droog to bend his hand back until the wrist ached. The blade rested against the palm of his hand, the same hand he’d smeared with Slick’s blood just to lick it clean. Slick moved painstakingly slow digging the blade in more and more until it bit through the skin. It was meant to hurt. Blood welled up and dripped down the valley of his thumb, between his fingers, and down the back of his hand. It was nothing he hadn’t braced himself to accept impassively.

“Spared your fancy suit, didn’t I?” Slick pointed out, like it was a gift. And certainly it was, coming from him.

The wound was shallow, it wouldn’t scar. But it stung when Slick pressed his tongue against it and Droog’s breath hissed out through clenched teeth. Over every finger and the back of his bare hand, Slick moved his mouth over Droog’s skin until the wound surrendered and stopped bleeding.

“Fair’s fair,” Slick told him, smirking up at him with blood smeared across his lips. What the taste of Slick’s blood did to him, this did a hundredfold; Droog went lightheaded.

His tongue touched Slick’s mouth for a taste, but Slick pulled back.

“You’re in my seat, Droog,” he snapped. “Get the fuck out.”

He shifted to the side without a word, but the fact was that metal fingers were still closed around his bare wrist. Slick reclined against the piano and with one motion, jerked Droog in against him.

He kissed hungrily, not with an interest in kissing, but a taste for blood. And Slick was no different, all teeth and condescending laughter. Droog bit at him every time he laughed, but that only seemed to encourage it. The bruises weren’t showing yet, but he knew someone had hit Slick in the face. This must hurt him a great deal, Droog thought, and felt his cock throb against Slick’s hip. He felt Slick press back just as urgently and his laughter was strangled out by curses.

“You sick fuck, why don’t you get on your knees and show me just what a loyal bitch you are.”

The card felt thin, but menacing against the cleanly shaven skin of Droog’s throat. Such a small thing, but his whole body was aware of it. What would it take, he wondered, for Slick to actually draw his blade again?

“Really Slick, if I’d known you would react like this, I wouldn’t have kept it a secret.”

In a flash, there was cold steel biting into his skin. Droog could only smile.

“Don’t make me repeat myself,” Slick told him, a hand reaching up to press down on his shoulder. “I fucking hate repeating myself.”

“We wouldn’t want that,” he answered. It wasn’t that Slick, from this angle, could shove him to his knees. No, they both knew that when Droog moved, he went of his own volition.

It had been a while since they’d done anything like this, but, yes, Slick still liked the way he dug his fingers into his thighs. The sound that fought its way out of Slick’s skinny chest was satisfying on a level Droog had almost forgotten he had. For that reason and many others, he could forgive the way Slick’s hand in his hair fucked it up, the way his nails scratched into his scalp. Not that he didn’t like those things, but if it were anyone else, he’d have taken off their hand on principle.

“Would you hurry the fuck up,” Slick said, while Droog took his time with buttons and zippers. There was the smell of salt and skin, under that the smell of other people’s blood. That was soaked into every article of Slick’s limited wardrobe, he’d bet — old, lingering, metallic. He pressed close to Slick’s bare skin and inhaled.

With lips, then tongue, then open mouth and hands, he worked Slick into hissing breaths and strangled curses.

“You don’t have to be so goddamn careful with your fucking teeth,” he got out, between a lot of petty insults about how slow and terrible Droog was at this.

One handed, Droog undid his belt and fly without a change in his tempered pace. It made Slick laugh, a cruel sound that would have almost made Droog smile any other time. But right then, he had instead curled his lip away from his teeth and scraped them lightly up very sensitive skin until that laughter twisted into something else.

The floor was filthy, ruining the knees of his finely pressed pants. But when Slick pulled his hand away to brace himself against the fall over the keyboard, that seemed worthwhile. The blade remained, controlled, at the edge of Droog’s jaw. No matter how he clawed at the top of the piano or threw his head back and cursed, that hand stayed steady.

“Come on, come on, fuck, come on, Droog, hurry up.”

It aroused him more than anything, to feel the control and power Slick had over himself. The blade was just show, but it was still very sharp. It seemed to control Droog the way his tongue moving inside his mouth against the shaft of Slick’s cock was a kind of control.

Even when he gagged slightly, when saliva dripped over his lip, when Droog knew he’d lost his own composure, Slick held the blade steady. That hand didn’t even twitch when he came, flooding Droog’s mouth with bitterness.

Droog pulled away, watching the frantic way Slick’s chest rose and fell with his breathing. He was leaned back, all angles and points sprawled across the front of the piano.

“Fuck,” he hissed. His face was an angry grimace that familiarity had taught Droog was a good thing.

There was a soreness in his knees, a numbness in his toes, and an ache in his whole body that twinged when Slick took the blade from his neck. This was something that he needed, but he knew he still needed more.

“That was… Fuck, needed that,” Slick admitted, though Droog never would have done such a thing. Instead, he breathed once and then pressed his head into Slick’s thigh, biting him through the fabric.

“Fuck off, Droog, too soon for that shit.”

“You fuck off,” he answered, unable to conjure up anything more articulate than that in the moment. Droog leaned back, shut his eyes tight and worked his hand fast and hard over his cock.

Blind, he smelled blood. When Slick pressed fingers to his lips, he opened his mouth on instinct. Blood dripped down bony, scarred fingers, welled up under long nails, and Droog found it all with his tongue. It was rich with a taste that overwhelmed all of his senses until all he heard was Slick’s pulse and all he saw was red.

With an open mouth, he sought out the source, an open cut across Slick’s palm. It was shallow and he licked at it until it stopped bleeding. The whine that caught in his throat, then, was involuntary. Slick laughed, but that was a distant sound to him, because he was already gone, overwhelmed and lost.

And when sense came back and he realized just how filthy the floor was and how much he did not enjoy having his hair messed with, Slick was still standing there, watching, hand extended.


End file.
